| Popis: |
Central Europe looks back on more than 2000 years of mining and on more than 500 Ma of ore mineralization and deposition of non-metallic and energy resources. The area under consideration extends from eastern France to western Russia and from southern Denmark to northern Italy, it covers the boundary between the Variscan and Alpine metallo-tectonic units which host some of the most well-known deposits on earth, e.g. Rammelsberg (Germany), Kupferschiefer (Germany, Poland), Bleiberg (Austria), Jáchymov (Czech Republic), Idrija (Slovenia), Kremnica (Slowakia), Les Baux (France). Many oft them have significantly contributed to the understanding of the origin of similar deposits elsewhere in the world, although many of them can today no longer be termed deposit by world standards. Excluding the base metal deposits in Poland, it is mainly coal, salt and a wide range of non-metallic commodities which render Central Europe to rank high up in the list of raw materials even by world standards. The Variscan and Alpine metallogenetic successions are not very much different as far as the types of deposits are concerned. A sequence of stratabound, thrustbound and collision-/ granite-related deposits developed during the Variscan and Alpine metallogenesis. The late Variscan/early Alpine and Subhercynian/Laramide/late Alpine uplift resulted in the formation of a set of unconformities or, in geomorphological terms, peneplains with which supergene and hypogene mineralizations are associated. The limit between the late and early Alpine epochs of unconformity-related mineralization coincides with the period of maximum spreading in the Alpine Tethys during the mid-Jurassic. Re-mobilization was triggered along deep-seated fault zones during various periods of the Variscan and Alpine metallogenetic cycles, the most far-reaching processes of this type occur(red) during the Cenozoic along, e.g., the Rhein Graben where a new cycle is going to start off. In Central Europe hydrocarbons were trapped all along the Meso- and Cenozoic. At the eastern edge of the Variscan craton hydrocarbon trapping has already started during the Paleozoic. |
